Category Archives: john cleese

Winnie the Pooh ~ I saw this one not in the theaters, but as an added treat on the first night of my vacation onboard the Disney Dream, and let’s get real, nothing trumps seeing a Disney flick, like seeing a Disney flick on the Disney boat. They have built, on all their ships, beautiful old-fashioned movie theaters full of the glory of yesteryear where there are no bad seats and it feels like an event to see any film. Last year, seeing Old Dogs on board made the hell of that cinematic experience wonderful. Loews in Cherry Hill should take note. Atmosphere counts for a lot.

Unlike Old Dogs, I liked Winnie the Pooh quite a lot, mostly because Tigger is my favorite Disney character, I even liked The Tigger Movie, and that was pretty bad, although it was Gone with the Wind compared to Old Dogs. I love A.A. Milne’s characters, by Disney or otherwise, but have not been fond of newer versions of their adventures. This new animated film is respectful of the original The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and is a proper next chapter.

There is a mix of both old and new voice cast, with Jim Cummings taking on both Tigger and Pooh as well as a few other additions like Craig Ferguson and John Cleese. Only one oddity sticks out and that’s Jack Boulter as Christopher Robin, and that’s only because it’s markedly different, not wrong. And also, just like a Marvel movie, you must wait through the credits to the very end. No, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury doesn’t ask Tigger to join the Avengers (awww…) but it’s still well worth it.

The Strange Case of the End of Civilsation as We Know It ~ back in the 1970s when PBS realized just how popular Monty Python was they also started to show this under-an-hour long ‘movie’ starring John Cleese as the incompetent grandson of Sherlock Holmes. As a huge Python fan in my early teens I thought this was hilarious. Unfortunately the years have not been kind. Somehow the repetitive jokes, Dr. Watson with a bionic nose and multiple impressions of TV detectives of the time (a la Murder by Death) just don’t do it for me any more. Other derivative Python projects like the Rutles are much better, and much funnier.